GOES-16 ABI Radiance Quicklooks for all 16 bands at 1925 UTC on 3 March 2017 (Click to enlarge)

Note: GOES-16 data shown on this page are preliminary, non-operational data and are undergoing on-orbit testing.

CSPP (Community Satellite Processing Package) Geo software developed at SSEC/CIMSS is designed to allow a user to process data from a GRB (GOES ReBroadcast) antenna, producing useful imagery. Development Snapshot Releases have been ongoing as actual GRB GOES-16 signal has become available to shake out any issues, and Quicklook ABI images are now being processed, as shown in the animation above. Grey-scale value ranges for these images are not now configurable; different values are used for each band (which explains, for example, why Band 8, 9 and 10 — the three water vapor channels at 6.2 µm, 6.95 µm and 7.3 µm do not appear to be progressively warmer).

GOES-16 Visible (0.64 µm) Imagery, every minute from 1427-2000 UTC on 3 March 2017 (Click to play mp4 animation)

Note: GOES-16 data shown on this page are preliminary, non-operational data and are undergoing on-orbit testing.

Heavy snow squalls led to multiple vehicle crashes that shut down both I-80 and I-99 in central Pennsylvania on Friday 3 March (link 1 | link 2). A Mesoscale sector over Pennsylvania today provided 1-minute imagery, enabling forecasters to view the event as it happened (Click image above for an mp4 animation, or here for a 300-megabyte animated gif). The excellent temporal sampling of the mesoscale sectors — which data typically shows up in AWIPS within two minutes — is key to monitoring the progression of the snow bands across Pennsylvania. ‘Clean Infrared Window’ (that is, 10.3 µm) animations for this event are available here (mp4, animated gif). These infrared animations end at 1845 UTC. Note that State College PA (KUNV) had 1/8th mile visibility in snow at 1835 UTC. DuBois (KDUJ) had 1/4-mile visibility at the start of both animations.

Note: GOES-16 data shown on this page are preliminary, non-operational data and are undergoing on-orbit testing.

GOES-16 ABI Flex Mode (Mode 3) scanning affords the opportunity of two moveable mesoscale sectors that are 1000×1000 km in size at the sub-satellite point. These sectors are scanned every 60 seconds. After post-launch testing is complete this summer, a National Weather Service (NWS) Weather Forecast Office (WFO) or a National Center (SPC, or NHC, for example), can request that the Mesoscale domain be moved to sample a region or feature of interest. If no requests are active, then default positions, shown above for GOES-16 in the Test Position at 89.5º W, are used. These defaults were selected because they overlay major air corridors.

When GOES-16 and GOES-S (operating as GOES-17) are operational, four different Mesoscale Sectors will be available. The Default positions for Mesoscale Sectors are shown below.

Note: GOES-16 data shown on this page are preliminary, non-operational data and are undergoing on-orbit testing.

GOES-16 data that flow into AWIPS for Full Disk display are not at Full Resolution; rather, they are degraded to approximately 6-km resolution. The northern boundary of the GOES-16 ‘CONUS’ domain (GOES-16 data do flow into AWIPS at full resolution for this domain) is very close to the US-Canada border (as shown in this animation of all 16 bands from this blog post, and also in the animation above). When zoomed out, there is little apparent difference in the two images. If you zoom in, however, as shown below with Band 2 (0.64 µm) imagery, the seam between the two resolutions is very noticeable.